


little kids get big so fast

by salazarastark



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-15
Updated: 2019-05-15
Packaged: 2020-03-05 19:52:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18835609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salazarastark/pseuds/salazarastark
Summary: Steve ends up having to take care of the deaged Defenders.





	little kids get big so fast

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is largely unbetaed, so constructive criticism would be greatly appreciated. As this was for the Marvel TV Bang, there was incredible art made for this fic, that you can view [here](https://angelfirevt.tumblr.com/post/184694680468/art-for-salazarastarks-marvel-tv-bang-story) that was done by Angelfirevt.

Matt wakes up feeling like shit. There is a pounding in his head, and his senses are out of control, reaching all around the room and sending back far too much information. With a groan, he reaches and grabs his pillow. He holds it over his head and shoves his face into the mattress, hoping that it might stop the onslaught that is pressing down on him.

His senses are so strained that it takes him longer than he’s proud of to realize that this is not his home, and this headache is not some standard hangover. In fact, he doesn’t remember anything about last night, especially anything that would have him end up in a strange bed in a strange apartment.

He takes a steadying breath, and puts his training to use. The sheets are in good quality and clean. He hears and smells pancakes being made, which wakes his stomach up and Matt realizes that he is starving. Whatever happened last night must have worn him out.

He tunes into his body, and he finds to his relief that while his muscle are aching, it’s not the soreness that sex would bring. It's the soreness of a night spent patrolling the city. That still doesn’t explain how he got here, and it worries him that he got to such a state last night that someone could have easily taken advantage.

He removes the pillow and gingerly sits up. That makes the pain in his head cut him like a knife, and he groans as he puts his head into his hands. The sounds of pancakes being made still, and then there are footsteps heading towards the room that he’s in.

Matt tenses, getting ready to fight whoever the hell it is in their apartment, but he fears that he won’t be able to put much of one. Added to the fact that he just realized he is not wearing his own clothes, or even the Daredevil suit, but rather the clothes of the person who lives in this apartment, who is a few sizes bigger than Matt and taller too.

The door opens.

“Hey,” says a man softly, one that sounds familiar actually, but Matt can’t place it. “Are you okay?”

Matt gets ready to run, unsure of this strangely familiar man and why he’s wearing his clothes.

“Your clothes are in the bathroom drying,” the man says. “I helped you get out of them last night and into some of mine. You don’t have to be worried about me telling anyone who you are. I can keep a secret.”

Shit. Matt knows the man isn’t lying, which is good, but that means there is one more person that knows that Matt is Daredevil and that’s not good.

“Who are you?” Matt asks, and then winces at how raw his voice sounds.

What the hell did he go through last night?

“You don’t-” the man says, and then gives a humorless chuckle. “Of course not. The  _ Obliti _ drug makes sure of that.”

“The  _ Obliti _ drug?” Matt asks. “Is that what did this to me?”

“Yeah. You caught a face full of it last night. It’s suppose to make people forget something that happens to them before it happens.”

“It works,” Matt says with a wince as he leaves his fighting stance. “What happened to me? How’d I get here?”

“You were fighting in an alley with some man,” the man says simply. “I heard, came to help, saw you catch this drug, which we’ve been tracking for a couple weeks. The man tried to infect me too, but I dodged. You were out of commission and the man got away while I went to help you.”

“You didn’t chase after him?” Matt asks.

“You’d rather I’d leave you alone and unconscious in an alley?”

Matt groans as the image enters his mind. “Good point.” He isn't happy about this man knowing his identity, but at least it's only the one and he doesn't  _ seem _ like he's going to hold this over Matt.

“Who are you?” Matt says as he slowly gets off the bed, ignoring how it hurts his head. It's just a little better than it was before, which is all he needs to move on his day.

“Steve Rogers,” the man says and for one moment, Matt thinks about how familiar that name sounds before the realization hits him like a truck.

His head jolts up as his mind blanks for a second. He turns his head in the direction of  _ Captain Fucking America _ , because that's why his voice sounded so familiar. He's heard it on news channels since the attack, and before that, he heard it in school during the WWII part of the curriculum, showing old war videos. Foggy watched an Unsolved Mysteries YouTube show that covered Captain America that was in Matt's top 5 of them. For God's sake, he owned a Captain America shirt when he was kid, like what almost every kid in America did, and watched the Howling Commandos cartoon.

He's a little ashamed that he only just recognized it now, but better late than never.

It does make sense however, that Captain America would have been able to take someone down that Matt couldn't, and Matt's mind catches onto the way that he knew about the drug and its effects when Matt was unaware of its existence prior to now.

But it does open a new set of problems, mainly that Matt has never wanted to get tangled up in the Avengers, never wanted to deal with them and their lives where everyone knows who they are and they're celebrities, gossip fodder.

That's not how Daredevil could work.

Ever.

“I'm not going to tell anyone about this,” Captain America says. Again, he's telling the truth.

“Why not?” Matt asks. He's heard Tony Stark talk about how he wants to meet Daredevil, recruit him to the team. He assumed the sentiment was shared by the rest of the Avengers.

He hear's the captain move slightly, then a beat of silence, and then a sheepish, “Oh, um, that was a shrug.”

“Figured,” Matt says dryly. “My hearing's pretty good.”

“It must be,” Captain America says, with something of admiration in his voice. “All your other senses must overcompensate like crazy.”

“They do,” Matt says curtly. “Now, you didn’t answer my question? Why wouldn’t you tell anyone about this? I thought your friend Stark wanted to know me, get me in.”

“He does,” Captain America responds, “but you obviously don’t want to, and in my opinion, I don’t see how forcing you to join the Avengers will make you a very effective teammate. Plus, I don’t even know your name.”

“You know what I look like,” Matt fires back, though he’s glad that he had at least enough presence of mind last night to not say his name.

“True, and while I’m sure I could find you, it would take a while,” the captain shoots towards him, his tone a little more aggressive. Then he takes a breath, leans back on his heels, takes a step back. “Look, I’m not going to tell the Avengers about you. I don’t want to. But I don’t think it’s the worst thing in the world for us to get to know each other. You clearly needed my help last night.”

Matt bristles at that. “I didn't need your help.”

“Really?” Captain America says with a chuckle. “You can't even remember what happened to you last night. How exactly could you have gotten out of it?”

Jesus Christ, this man is an asshole. Matt never knew it, it was kept out of the history books.

“I would have figured out something,” he says, hating how much he sounds like a petulant child right then.

“Of course, you would have,” the captain says, his voice full of patronization. “But what would have happened to you before you were able too? You were out of it last night. You could barely talk, couldn't stand, much less walk. I had to carry you back to my apartment, and just be glad I knew that the  _ Obliti _ drug just causes memory loss and a bad headache in the morning. Otherwise I would have had to take you to the S.H.I.E.L.D. infirmary, and then you really would have been screwed.”

Seriously, how did Captain America's huge attitude problem never get realized to the public? It's awful.

Especially because he's a hundred percent right and Matt can't find fault with his argument.

Still doesn't mean that he wants Captain America to know who he is.

He's silent for a moment, trying to think of how he could possibly get out of telling Captain America who he was while not seeming unnecessarily stubborn.

He was coming up blank. Besides, Captain America could easily find out who he was and show up on his doorstep, or worse, the firm's. Karen would ask too many questions, and Foggy would either get way too happy or way too disappointed and Matt didn't think he could live with either one.

Finally, he sighed. “Do you swear that you won't tell anyone about me, or that you even know me at all? That if we ever come across each other as Daredevil and Captain America, we won't acknowledge each other besides making sure the other's won't uncover my identity?”

“I swear it,” Captain America says, firmly, patriotically, basically how you would expect Captain America to sound.

Matt nods at that. “Good. I'll make up the contracts later and have you sign them.”

“Wait? Wha-?” Captain America starts to say, but Matt cuts him off, thrusts out his hand for him to shake.

“Matt Murdock, Attorney-At-Law.”

“Steve Rogers,” Captain America says. “And please, call me Steve.”

Matt isn't sure if he can do that, but he'll try.

*

He's starving, so Steve leads him out of the bedroom and towards the kitchen, where there are pancakes waiting and Matt instantly digs in. The  _ Obliti _ drug must have caused this hunger, as Matt finds himself eating five pancakes in as many minutes. He feels Steve's gaze upon him as he eats this fast, but it doesn't feel judgmental and anyway, it's not like Matt really cares, he just wants to eat.

He honestly can't even tell if they're good or bad, that's how fast he's inhaling them.

“Do you want anything else?” Steve says casually as Matt grabs a sixth and seventh pancake.

“No,” Matt says with a full mouth. “How many of these are left?”

“I made ten,” Steve says. “I can make more if you want.”

“That'd be nice,” Matt replies. He imagines that his father is berating his rudeness right now, but Matt ignores that voice.

He's  _ hungry _ .

“Okay,” Steve says with a laugh as he gets up to make more. “Just don't make yourself sick.”

Matt nods absentmindedly.

It takes twelve pancakes to fully sate Matt's hunger in the end. He then promptly goes into a food coma on Captain America’s couch as he listens to the man clean up breakfast. He tries to offer to help, but the other man had brushed him off and damn near pushed Matt onto the couch, and once he was laying down, well, he didn't want to get up.

His mind is in a daze, but he still hears it when Steve finishes up in the kitchen. He tilts his head towards the sound of Steve walking into the living room.

“So what are your plans to go after the  _ Obliti _ drug?” he asks as soon as he walks in.

“What makes you ask that?” Matt responds. Steve’s not wrong, but he still doesn’t. . . .

Okay, maybe he does, and the judgmental silence that fills the room tells him that Steve is giving him a look right now.

Matt sighs. “I don’t have much of one. Essentially, it’s going to be tracking down the guy I was fighting and going from there. Is he’s producing the drug, or was he just a buyer? Whatever this drug is, it needs to be stopped, but now I need to do that around the Avengers.”

Steve gives a weak chuckle. “Actually, you don’t need to worry about that.”

Matt’s brow furrows.

“I might not have told the Avengers about the drug,” Steve says. “Like I said, I didn’t know anything about you until you woke up, and I didn’t want to ruin anything before I got a chance to talk to it.”

“So I don’t have to worry about them?” Matt asks, perking up at the thought that he might be able to take care of the bastard who did this to him before anyone else could get to them.

“No,” Steve says with a sigh. “Though I don’t want you to go against this guy alone. He already got a drop on you once, and you don’t know what other tricks he has up his sleeve.”

“You don’t think I can do it,” Matt says, his voice low and bristling.

“I think you can do it,” Steve says simply, “but I think you would also be stupid not accept any help.”

Matt is silent as he thinks over his options. Steve, as much as he hates it, has a point. Matt doesn’t know what to expect, and the fact that this drug has made it onto the Avengers raider while every other criminal Matt has fought apparently hasn’t, at least based on the fact that Matt has never heard the Avengers mention anything about Hell’s Kitchen and what Daredevil’s doing there, just Daredevil himself.

It leaves a bad taste in his mouth, but Matt finds himself, well, not trusting Captain America, but he knows the right battle to pick. Steve might not be making Matt reveal himself, but going along with what Steve wants now will make things easier in the long run.

Then, he can go back to taking care of his problems by himself. For now, he’ll take Steve’s help, as loath as he is to do it.

“So who are these guys?” Matt asks. “Why have they made this drug?”

Steve sighs. “Hold on a moment, I’m going to grab the folder.” He gets up, and Matt hears a shuffle close by, obviously the folders that Steve needs to read.

“Thought you had a photographic memory,” Matt mutters.

Steve, the bastard, hears it. He has the audacity to laugh. “I do, but a part is always a little nervous I’m suddenly going to forget it. Better to make sure that I have the correct information now, right?”

He does have a point. “Ah-ha,” he hears Steve whisper as he pulls out the folder, and Matt suddenly hopes those folders are in Braille, though he has extreme doubts that they are. Still, it would be so nice to read them real quick, see if there was anything in there that he could help out with, or might be a clue into one of the currently ten criminal bosses that he’s trying to track down and ruin right now.

“Alright,” Steve says, “the  _ Obliti _ drug is a drug that makes those infected very intoxicated within a matter of seconds, and when they wake up, they’ll forget about six hours before they were infected. I found you and the guy fighting around eleven. What’s the last thing you remember?”

Matt makes a face. “Getting off of work around five.”

“So that tracks,” Steve mumbles. “Alright, then. We don’t know much about those that are making the drug, but we know they’re selling it around the city. The reasons it’s been used have been for anything between sexual assaults to corporate espionage.”

“Why isn’t this a police matter?” Matt asks. “And why haven’t I heard about such a dangerous drug until now?”

Steve sighs. “Normally, it would be and we would tell the public, if it weren’t for a fact that the people using this drug have all been using it against the remnants of S.H.I.E.L.D. No civilians have been harmed directly, and it’s pretty clear that in cases where civilians were harmed, it was more along the lines of ‘collateral damage’. Even when it’s been used in public settings against S.H.I.E.L.D. agents who aren’t on duty, it’s seemed that they still been targeted because they were S.H.I.E.L.D. agents or used to be.”

“So HYDRA,” Matt states.

Steve sighs. “You would think. And it still might be, but we just don’t have enough evidence that says it is, and there’s some evidence that seems to point towards others. Of course, who these other’s are is a mystery, and it could easily be misdirection from HYDRA. What’s really worrying S.H.I.E.L.D. is the fact that the only guy that we were able to apprehend who appeared to have  _ some _ sort of knowledge about all of this implied that this is the start of whoever’s behind this plan, but then broke his cyanide pill.”

Matt frowns as a pit settles in his stomach. “What exactly could they be making that a overpowered roofie is on the bottom of the rung?”

“Now you see are problem,” Steve says.

Matt nods, and then a thought hits. “You said they only went after S.H.I.E.L.D. members. Why was I affected?”

Steve makes a noise of frustration. “I mean, I didn’t see the beginning of the fight, just the end. My guess is either that you were fighting him for an unrelated reason and he wanted to use every skill in his arsenal, or that he assumed you were connected with S.H.I.E.L.D. because you’re one of the only other superheroes in the game besides us.”

“So I’m damned if I join with you, damned if I don’t,” Matt says, letting his head fall back on the pillows as his headache returns.

“Yeah,” Steve says, with a small amount of sympathy tinging his voice.

“Alright,” Matt says with a sigh. “Let's get this over with.”

*

It doesn’t take long for them to suit up and head back to Hell’s Kitchen to find out where the sellers are. Matt can tell that Steve doesn’t like the idea of it being just the two of them, but he’s grateful that Steve doesn’t say anything about it. Matt couldn’t take it, not when he’s so on edge about going back to place that bested him last time.

Matt really doesn’t like to lose, and more importantly, he's afraid of it. He knows how good he is, and the idea that someone can best him grates and gnaws at him.

Steve does not seem to notice nor care about Matt's inner turmoil, or if he does, he very politely ignores it while Matt thinks about how he can know win a fight that he's forgotten ever losing.

Steve says nothing as he drives towards where he found Matt, other than, “Be careful, I'm borrowing this from Nat.”

That makes Matt go, “Holy shit, I'm driving around in Black Widow's car.”

He doesn’t realize he’s said that out loud until Steve laughs next to him. “Yeah, but you know that Nat isn’t . . . . Okay, she’s as scary as she looks, but she’s also much kinder than you’d think.”

It hits Matt suddenly, even more than it had in the apartment with that pounding headache, that he’s talking to Captain America. But not the man from his childhood, the hero who was larger than life, but the man who had saved New York from the aliens, who was friends with people like Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, Clint Barton, Natasha Romanov, and Thor, who saw and fought things that most other people couldn’t believe was the truth. . . .

It was almost stranger. It was one thing for the man to be from another time, but for him to be in this day and age, so new to this world yet so old.

Matt wonders if perhaps that it wasn’t because Captain America wasn’t just a man living in this time, a fact he’s known about for almost a year, but also perhaps because he was a man that Matt knows now, has heard speak and has interacted with.

He isn’t sure.

He doesn’t know if he wants to know what it is know.

Matt is so wrapped up in his thoughts that he’s only barely aware of the time in the car passing, and only jolts back to himself when there are almost at the spot that Matt assumes is where that he had been found.

It’s a dark alleyway, out of the way in a depressed part of Hell’s Kitchen. For the first time, Matt wonders what Steve was doing here. He turns to the man in question, the thought already on his lips and ready to be spoken, but Steve beats him to the punch and starts answering.

“I sometimes walk around the old parts of the city I use to know. I try to find the things that are the same in all the things that are different. I do it whenever I can’t sleep. I don’t know if that makes sense. . . .”

“It does,” Matt says with determination.

Steve seems surprised at that, but then a small chuckle escapes him, and Matt feels relieved at that for some reason.

He thinks that perhaps he wants Steve to be his friend, and the thought of it scared him.

He wasn’t good with friends. Foggy just happened, but Foggy happens with everyone. Karen was the same. But other than the two of them, Matt had never really had friends. He was friendly with others, but he couldn’t imagine letting others close to him. And yeah, Foggy and Claire knew the truth about him, but they didn’t fully understand and Matt wasn’t sure if they ever could.

Steve though? Steve could.

Matt turns away from Steve and gets out of the car. He makes his way into the alley, ignoring the feeling of trepidation as he walks into the metaphorical fire. Even if Steve hadn’t told him about what happened last night, he still thinks that he would have known that something bad happened to him in this area.

“What was he like?” Matt asks Steve, hoping that Steve won’t recognize the strange lilt his voice that Matt doesn’t how it got into him.

If he didn’t know better, he would swear it was fear.

“A little taller than you, about an even six foot. Close cropped hair, can’t say if it was dark blonde or light brown, too dark for me to make out the difference. Eyes were light, but again, couldn’t tell you. White skin, muscular, scar on the side of his face, tattoo on his neck. He was wearing nice black leather gloves, which is strange because the rest of his clothes didn’t match that level of dress,” Steve says, a cadence in his voice that tells Matt how used he is to giving people these descriptions, in breaking down other’s in what makes him the most identifiable. Matt wonders how Steve would have described him if his identity hadn’t been revealed yesterday night.

Still, this description doesn’t help Matt, but it’s clear that the thought hadn’t occurred to Steve, so Matt has to be the one to break it to him.

“No,” Matt says, “I mean, what was he like? Did he have a certain way of walking? What did he smell like? Did you hear his voice? I can’t rely on what he looks like, but honestly, that’s the worst way to tell who someone really is. You’d be surprised how often your eyes can lie to you.”

Steve says nothing for a moment, and then, “Honestly, I don’t think I would be.”

Matt scoffs. “Okay then. Now tell me what you noticed.”

Steve is silent, and then speaks again, slower, thinking back to last night. “He was right handed, but seemed to favor his left side. He had a heavy way of walking. Talented fighter, but he doesn’t seem to have that much training in many disciplines. He just learned how to street-fight well. He was losing against you, until you got distracted and that’s when he used the dust, which means that he’s smart and he takes advantage of opportunities presented. But I can’t tell you what he smelled like and he didn’t speak, just grunted whenever you hit him.”

Matt nods. “That’s better. Why didn’t you capture this guy again?”

“If I didn’t know better, I could have sworn that he disappeared. I focused on you for a moment, and when I looked back up to bring him in, he was already gone. Can’t figure out how.”

“Possibly Hand then,” Matt mutters, ignoring Steve’s question about who the Hand was. He would explain later.

“Okay,” Steve says with sigh. “Is there anything else you can tell?”

“Yeah,” Matt mumbles. “I smell something here, something familiar. . . . I think it’s . . . pie?”

“Pie?” Steve laughs. “Can you tell from what bakery?”

“Yeah,” Matt ignores the joke. “It smells like Charlie’s Bakery. It’s only a few blocks here, but the smell wouldn’t have traveled this far.”

“But it would have stayed overnight?”

Matt shakes his head. “No, but the dust might smell like it if I was being made near it. You didn’t notice a smell to it, did you?”

“No, but it doesn’t matter. This is literally our only lead and if it leads to a dead end, at least we know what it looks like.”

It’s a fair point, and not one that Matt can argue against.

He leads Steve toward the bakery, goes into the alleyway next to it when they arrive. He knows that the way to a basement is here, but he always know that they only use to cook things.

He assumed it was things they sold in the bakery, but it seems like Matt was wrong. The doors aren’t locked, which is stupid on their part, but it does make it easier for him and Steve to just walk right in.

Instantly, he knows that something is wrong. It’s quiet, but Matt can tell people are here, they’re just being very, very still. He feels Steve tense behind him, and he knows he can tell it too.

Of course, while Matt would be perfectly content to melt into the shadows and attack each person on their own, Steve does not have that same sense of self-preservation.

“Who’s here?” he yells, hefting his shield up, and Matt can see him, vaguely, in his mind, in the old school videos he saw before he lost his sight. The strong jaw, the steely determination.

Matt suddenly realizes that he actually knows what Steve looks like, the first person in years he can say that about. It’s a strange thought, and a discomforting one, and so Matt pushes it out of his mind.

God spared a look on Matt today however, and the people in the shadows heartbeats jump with . . . relief.

They recognize as Captain America, and they’re glad to see he’s here.

And if that’s the case, then these aren’t the drug dealers.

“Come out,” Matt shouts. “We’re here to find the people who are using these drugs. This is Captain America and I’m - ,” Matt recognizes what a stupid idea this could be, but he can’t stop himself, “and I’m Daredevil. If you tell us what you know, we’ll tell you what we do.”

Matt feels the unhappiness rolling off Steve, but he ignores it.

They slowly walk out.

A woman and two men, all extremely powerful, and Matt grips his cane tighter.

One of the men begin to speak. “You’re Daredevil?” his voice a deep baritone.

“Yeah,” Matt said. “I’m just Clark Kent right now.”

A small huff of amusement escapes Steve, and it makes Matt prouder than he feels he should be.

“Who are you?” he asks. 

“I’m Luke Cage,” baritone says. “This is Jessica Jones and Iron Fist.”

Matt knows those names, and he can tell that Steve knows those names.

“You’re looking for them too, then,” Steve says and the woman, Jessica, responds with, “Yeah. We’ve been tracking them for two days now. These fuckers seem content to use these drugs to rape a bunch of innocent people, and we need to stop them.”

“We’re going to,” Steve says grimly. “What have you guys found so far?”

“Their stash,” the last person, Iron Fist, says. “We were about to check it out when you came.”

“Well, then,” Matt says. “What are we waiting for?”

*

The four of them head to the back of the kitchen, to inspect the last few places that Jone, Cage, and . . . Steve’s almost dead positive that’s Danny Rand as Iron Fist, weren’t able to get to before they arrived. Steve just wants to do a quick scan of everything they already checked. Not because they didn’t believe they didn’t do a good job, but for his own piece of mind.

As much as they might have found that offensive, Steve can’t help but think that’s a good thing when he hears the hell, the clatter of someone escaping  _ somewhere somehow _ , and arrives just in time to see the aftermath of the  _ Obliti _ drugs once again.

Except this isn’t the  _ Obliti _ drugs.

It’s something different, something  _ really _ different.

Before his eyes, they all . . . shrink. In the general physical sense, but they also get younger.

Somehow, for some reason, these bastards managed to make a drug that would turn back the clock, make their victims little kids, and the potential this drug has, the things it could do, makes him see red.

But he can’t focus on that problem right now.

He wants to rush towards the four of them, but he forces himself to stop. He doesn’t know where else the drug could be and if it could affect him, and they certainly don’t need him turning into a child himself right now.

_ Obliti _ is activated once someone ingests it, through the nose or mouth. This drug probably works the same way, but he can’t be sure.

He walks toward them. They’ve all stopped shrinking, but they seem so little. No more than six or seven years old he thinks. Luke and Jess seem a little bigger, probably a little older, but Matt and Danny are tiny, and Steve’s heart aches. No matter what, he needs to get these kids out of this situation, no matter how old they might “actually” be.

And Steve wonders if they’ll have any memories of their adult lives, or if they really are just a bunch of kids right now, small and defenseless and Jesus Christ, Steve should have called in back up, why the hell did he not call in backup?

There is nothing he can do to protect his nose and mouth other than take a deep breath, send a quick text to Natasha to come to his location immediately because he made a massive miscalculation, and he walks up to the kids.

They are all so light.

He gathers them up in his arms, and walks out of the kitchen, out into the alleyway. Luckily no one is there, watching them and wondering what Captain America is doing with a bunch of little kids. Even better, Steve isn’t turning into a little kid himself, so he might get through this, though he needs to be looked over.

And shit, what’s he going to do about the kids? He knows that Matt, and probably the other three, would hate him telling S.H.I.E.L.D. about this, about  _ them _ , but Steve also doesn’t know how he can keep this hidden. They need to be tested, they need to be monitored, and they need someone who isn’t Steve and his huge pile of issues to take care of them.

Steve is so lost in his panic, watching over the kids, glad they’re breathing, but afraid to get too close unless whatever infected them also infects him, that he almost doesn’t notice Natasha arrive.

Almost being the key word, because he still looks up when he hears a car door shut from down the block, and the thread is so slight that it almost doesn’t sound like anyone is walking at all. In fact, unless you trained yourself like Steve, you wouldn’t realize anyone was coming at you at all.

Steve still tenses, knowing that it’s Natasha, but unwilling to give that trust away until he’s sure.

She trained him well.

She rounds the corner and sees him and the kids and frowns.

“There’s four,” she said. “You said there was five.”

“I said there might be five,” Steve shoots back. “I didn’t know what would happen to me once I got them out of there.”

She catches the hidden meanings of his words, turns back to the children lying on the ground, on Steve’s jacket and their adult clothing. “How old were they?”

“Late twenties, early thirties.”

“Who are they?” Natasha bends down to look at the children, who Steve is realizing, don’t seem to be moving much for little kids and that gives him a whole new worry.

“Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Daredevil, Iron Fist,” Steve says pointing to each one in question.

“Shit,” Nat says under her breath. “Steve, people are going to notice that they’re missing and we won’t have anything to tell them. And how did this happen anyway?”

Steve fills her in, and he sees her eyes widen as he informs her that the makers of this drug are the same ones as the  _ Obliti _ drugs, but that’s it. By the end of his speech, she staring down at the kids.

“What are you going to do?” she asks in a whisper. “You can’t go to S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“I know,” Steve says. “And I doubt any of them want me to go to Tony or Bruce, even though I can’t think of a better idea. You know how hard they want to recruit these guys. If they really wanted to join, they wouldn’t been caught in the line of fire.”

“But how can you take care of them?” Natasha pushes back. “How can you make sure they’re reacting properly to this drug?”

“I don’t know,” Steve growls, and that makes Matt fidget in his sleep. He and Natasha instantly close their mouths and go quiet, but luckily, he doesn't wake up. Still, Steve is glad to see  _ some _ movement come from the children.

Natasha sighs. “I know Tony’s the one really pushing to recruit them. We can probably get Bruce to keep it a secret, and let’s be honest, he’s the one we really need anyway.”

Steve nods his head begrudgingly. He doesn’t like keeping such a secret from Tony, knows that it’ll weaken the team dynamics, but he also know that he has no choice, not if he wants there to be any chance of these four ever joining the Avengers.

Besides, it’s certainly not the worst thing he’s keeping from Tony.

(Yes, he might not know for certain how Howard and Maria Stark really died, but he knows. He knows it as much as he knows that Tony will never give Bucky a chance once he knows, and Steve can’t blame him for that fact.)

And he honestly can’t think of a better option that Bruce. He sighs and nods, giving Natasha the permission he knows she wants before she makes her decision. “Alright, we’ll bring this to Bruce. But don’t tell this to anyone else, and make sure Bruce knows it too. We need to keep this as much underwraps as possible, and that can’t happen the more people know.”

“Are you certain about that?” Natasha asks.

He’s not, and he’s not sure if it’s the right way to do this, but it’s the right thing. Unless he really needs to, he’s not going to betray Matt’s trust and with him, Luke, Jessica, and Danny’s trust too.

“Okay,” she says, and she sounds barely judging at all, so Steve knows that she’s conceding that he actually has good points for not telling Tony about this. She pulls out her phone, and quickly calls Bruce. The conversation’s short, and Steve is only half listening, his attention going back to the children in front of him. He tunes back in just as she hangs up.

“Alright, let’s get these kids into a car. Bruce is going to meet us in this old S.H.I.E.L.D. spot. HYDRA doesn’t want it because it’s so small and it’s location isn’t very ideal, but it has enough to make sure they’re okay and we can figure out how to change them back. Might even get a lead on  _ Obliti _ on this.”

It reminds her of Steve’s original purpose for being here, and she turns to look at the kitchen. A moment passes while miles of thoughts go through her head, and finally, she turns to look at Steve. She grabs his arm, and pulls it close. She takes out a pen and scribbles an address on Steve’s forearm. “Head there. I don’t want to leave this place before we get a chance to inspect it. I’m going to get Clint downhere with some protective gear so we can get through this quickly. Give me a call as soon as you get the safehouse and Bruce starts checking out those kids.”

Steve nods, and quickly scoops all the kids up. He becomes vaguely aware how ridiculous he must look, all of them in his arms, pretty much two under an arm, when Natasha’s lips quirk. “Well, I’m filing away that mental picture. Now hurry up. You want to get them there as soon as possible, and in case your reaction delayed, that way Bruce can take care of you too. But,” she adds, eyes flashing towards him, “if you turn too, there’s no way I’m keeping this from the rest. I understand your reasons for them, but I’m not going to lie to the other’s about their teammate.”

(Steve knows she knows the truth about Howard and Maria too, and she knows he knows she knows and so on and on and fucking on. He doesn’t know why she hasn’t told Tony anything, except that she knows that Steve has to be the one to tell him. But she’s going to have to live with Steve in eternal disappointment, because there’s no way he’s ever letting this secret slip.)

He hurries towards his car, glad that night is setting in, though it’s a little worrying that no one seems to care about the man who is clearly tired and done and walking as fast as he possibly can to get four damn near comatose kids to his car. He doesn’t question the apathy of New Yorker’s today though, not when it works so well in his favor.

The ride doesn’t take long, maybe only fifteen minutes, but it feels like forever, with the kids all piled up in the backseat, sound asleep on top of each other.

Seriously, is it normal for kids to spend this much time sleeping and not doing . . . well anything kid like?

Or is sleeping more kidlike that remembers? He doesn’t have a good frame of reference, not with all his illnesses. There are so many things he thought were normal that it turned out they weren’t and so many thing that he thought were strange but then turned out to be fairly normal. . . . Needless to say, Steve has gotten pretty good at letting others talk about his childhood before he gets to his own.

Just to make sure he has the right frame of reference.

Bruce is somehow already there when he arrives, and he frowns at the children in Steve’s arms.

“Are you sure we shouldn’t tell Tony?” he asks a few separate times, and each time Steve shakes his head.

It doesn’t feel right, not when he doesn’t know how each of them would react to Tony Stark being around their child self.

Bruce checks over the children, but not before drawing blood from Steve to make sure that it doesn’t have any similarities to the drugs in the four children. Steve is then told to go take a shower, just to make sure that anything on his skin is washed away, but leave his clothes because Bruce wants to test those.

Steve walks to the shower exhausted, but he cleans up quickly and efficiently, in just enough time to start grabbing the children that are okay to wash them up before he tucks them into one of the smaller beds that are in the communal sleeping area. It’s awkward, knowing that these children are actually fully grown adults that might not like getting an unconscious bath from Captain America, but Steve doesn’t see what choice he has. He makes it quick, and once they’re all in bed, he collapses in one himself, turns off the world and gets as comfortable as he can.

He’s woken up in what seems like moments later, but apparently was actually a couple of hours by Bruce, to inform him that he’s cleared of the drugs, so are the clothes, and that the kids should be okay in about mouth, but Bruce doesn’t seem very sure about that.

Steve’s going to be perfectly honest, that hesitation doesn’t fill him with much confidence.

But that’s a problem for tomorrow, when he’s not so fucking tired, and Steve lets himself fall back to sleep as Bruce checks the data again and tries to figure out how this connect to  _ Obliti _ . He thinks he distantly hears Natasha come in, and he could swear that he feels fingers run through his hair just a few minutes after that, but there’s nothing else after that.

*

He wakes up to darkness, and the feeling of eyes on him. Steve rolls over to find himself staring the eyes of what he assumes to be a young Luke Cage and Danny Rand. Luke looks to be a couple years older than Danny, and is gripping him closely. Their mouths are wide opened, and Steve’s is as well.

Finally, Luke speaks. “Are you Captain America?” he says in whispered awe.

Steve blinks a couple times, and then nods. “Yeah, I am.”

“What are you doing here?” Danny adds in now.

“I’m. . . .” that’s actually a good question. “I’m here to watch over you.”

Luke and Danny look at each other out of the corner of their eyes. “Why?” they say simultaneously.

“Because,” Steve says, unsure how to go about this, “your parent’s asked me too!”

There is no way these kids are going to buy this, and speaking of kids, where are Jessica and Matt? He turns to look at the bed he had put them all in, glad to see that those two at least are still asleep.

As Steve guessed, Luke and Danny look suitably unimpressed.

“Why would our parents ask you to take care of us?” Luke asks.

“Yeah,” Danny adds. “You’re dead!”

Well, he gets right to the point.

Steve sighs. These kids aren’t going to believe anything that Steve tells them, but he’s really not sure what to do. He doesn’t know how they’d react to the truth, and only wants to save that for the very last resort.

He gets out of bed, and kneels down in front of the kids. He adopts his best Captain America voice, the one he used in those stupid school PSA’s. (He was told that every Avenger would be doing one. That had been a lie.) “Look, kids, I wish I could tell you why you’re here. But I’m afraid at this moment, I can’t. It’s a top secret mission, and I need you guys to help me with it.”

Thank God, for too trusting kids, because once they think that Captain America needs their help, they quiet down and eagerly nod with wide eyes.

It’s actually really adorable.

“Okay,” Steve says, injecting his voice with much more enthusiasm than he feels. “We gotta be quiet now, and let Jessica and Matt sleep some more. Can you do that?”

Luke and Danny nod again, and then Danny frowns. “I’m hungry, can we eat?”

Well, it’s not like Steve can exactly tell him no.

He strains his smile a little more. “Sure! Let me just go find Bruce or Nat, see what’s around.”

He opens the door, looks down the hall and he hears the clatter of something happening in the kitchen. He walks over to quickly, relief flooding his veins when he sees Natasha making pancakes while Bruce is buried in a pile of paperwork, hair mess, jittering from all the coffee he must have consumed last night.

Steve would apologize for doing this to him, except he also knows that Bruce finds this sort of thing to be addicting, the puzzles of the drugs and how they affected the four adults turned kids in the other room.

Natasha turns around to look at him, raising an eyebrow when she sees him. “Good night’s sleep?” she asks, and Steve gives a strained chuckle.

“They’re hungry,” he says, emphasizing the they’re so Natasha understand he truly has no clue what he’s doing and he’s probably traumatizing these kids just by being near them.

No need to mention that Danny was the only one who mentioned food, Natasha might try and make fun of him then.

As it, she’s still probably going to try to.

“Well, I’m making pancakes for them, if they want any.”

Steve knows they will. He also knows he will want some, because Natasha makes really good pancakes, and she’s even reviving Bruce from his zone as he hears the word pancakes, though he somehow managed to miss the fact that they were even being made in the first place.

He runs to go grab the kids.

Jessica and Matt are starting to wake, rubbing their eyes, and Luke and Danny are watching them with trepidation on their faces.

Shit, these kids don’t even know each other.

Steve enters the room, and all eyes suddenly go to him.

Jessica frowns, clearly uncertain about who this man is, but Matt doesn’t do anything but tilt his head and try to listen.

“He’s blind,” Danny whispers to Steve, and Steve has to prevent himself from smiling when he sees Matt’s head turn towards Danny, an affronted look crossing his face.

“Yeah, but don’t talk about it,” Luke whispers too, but neither him nor Danny have volume control at this age, because Matt hears that too.

Jessica pulls the smaller boy close to her, and frowns at Danny and Luke.

“Shut up, he can hear you and I don’t think he likes it.” She looks at Matt, who nods, and then Jessica goes back to glaring at Luke and Danny.

God help him, Steve finds all four of them adorable, and this is so not a good idea.

Jessica turns to look at Steve. “You’re Captain America,” she says bluntly, and that makes Matt speak for the first time, jumping to full attention and a bright smile crossing his face.

“Captain America! Really? Are you here to fight Nazi’s?”

There is an expected silence from the four children, all waiting for the confirmation that yes, Steve is here to fight Nazi’s.

These kids will end up being the death of him, Steve just knows it.

“Not . . . exactly,” Steve says. “Look, I’m actually here to help you guys because you went through . . . a time machine,” he ends lamely.

Luckily, children are impressionable and easily believed, even ones who will grow into vigilantes. All eyes get big, and their heads nod sagely, as if this makes total sense.

Which considering everything else in the world, it actually could happen.

“Really?” Jessica asks with a gasp. “Like  _ Back to the Future _ ?”

Steve stares at her, makes a mental note to watch those movies, and hopes for the best when he says, “Exactly like  _ Back to the Future _ .”

“Wow,” all four kids say at once, and shit, Steve really needs to see this movie.

“So did you time travel too?” Luke says, and Steve nods and even manages not to feel guilty about it, because he’s sure if you twisted the meaning of time travel, you could get his situation.

Somehow.

“Okay, so I need to explain something to you guys. You’re in the future, which is really scary, I know, and that means you have to be on your best behavior until you get back.”

“How did it happen?” Jessica pipes in, and Steve bites his tongue. Damn inquisitive children.

He puts on a smile though, and shrugs. “I don’t know, which is another reason we have to be really careful. Who knows what can happen?”

He honestly does feel bad for scaring the children, but he needs to make sure that these kids stay close to him, and that they don’t run off anywhere, trying to look for family and friends.

They all nod, trusting in Captain America to tell them the truth.

Steve needs to be someone that they can put their trust in.

“Now,” he says. “There are two people here who are helping us, and they’re really nice and they’re  _ not _ bad guys,” he adds when he sees the look on Jessica’s face and she opens her mouth. “They want to help us. There names are Natasha and Bruce, and I’ve known them since I met them since I got here two years ago. I’m going to take you to meet them.”

“Is that where you’ve been?” Danny asks eagerly. “Since you’ve disappeared?”

His stomach twists some more, and Steve forces himself to ignore it. These are little kids and they won’t understand everything that’s going on, and time travel is the best explanation.

“Yup! Now let’s go get something to eat. I’m assuming you’re hungry?”

Three heads nod, but Matt doesn’t do anything, quiet as a mouse. Steve frowns. “Matt, are you okay?”

Matt takes a deep breath and starts to sob, and without even realizing it, Steve has the kid in his arms and is gently soothing him. “Hey, buddy. What’s the matter?”

“I- I can’t see.”

*

So Bruce looks it up, and it appears that Matt Murdock lost his sight when he was nine. Theoretically, when Matt was regressed to five, his vision should have returned, but for some reason it didn’t. Exams show that the kids still have scars that were gained when they were adults, and X-Ray’s show that old fractures look just as old.

Obviously they don’t tell any of the kids about this, except they have to think of some reason that Matt is blind that they will accept without ruining Steve’ lie (he’s only lying to himself if he tells himself he’s not to the kids). Natasha settles on a rare side effect on whatever made them “time travel” to the modern age.

Bruce is making sure that none of them have anything else that might reveal itself unexpectedly that the kids won’t know about yet, just to get ahead of the problem.

While Bruce is doing that, and Natasha is feeding the other three, Steve is left with comforting Matt. After the initial statement, Matt was quieted down, calmly accepted Natasha explanation’s even while Luke, Danny, and Jessica panic.

Matt has settled against Steve’s chest, tears still running down his chest. Steve has a finger on his pulse, and he can tell that Matt is close to a panic attack despite his outward appearance. Steve feels for him, he can’t imagine the fear and terror that must be coursing through him at the moment as he gets accustomed to the darkness.

“It’s going to be okay,” Steve whispers into Matt’s hair. “I understand how scary this is, but you’ll be okay. I promise.”

“How do you know?” Matt asks, and that’s a very good question, but it’s one that Steve has to answer.

“I know, because I know that you’re a strong kid and I’m not going to leave you to figure this out on your own. And neither will Luke or Danny or Jessica. They just met you and they’re already so protective of you.”

Matt sniffles, and snuggles in closer to Steve. “Do you really think I’m strong?” he asks in a small voice.

“Of course, I do! This is a terrible situation and you’re handling it so much better than a lot of people would.”

“I want my dad,” Matt mumbles, and that just makes Steve’s heart break a little more.

“I know, buddy.” Steve takes a deep breath. “You know, I never knew my dad.”

“Really?” Matt asks, face tilting towards the sound of Steve’s voice.

“Really. But my mom was the best, and there’s not a day where I don’t think about her and I don’t miss her just a little bit.”

“I didn’t know my mom,” Matt says. “She left me and Daddy. Did your daddy leave you?”

Steve shakes his head. “No, he didn’t. He died before I was born, so I never met him at all.”

“Do you think your daddy would have liked you? I think my mom would have liked me if she stayed, but maybe not. Maybe that’s the reason she left, because she didn’t like me.”

God, the pain this kid has gone through. It makes Steve hold him tighter.

“Yeah, buddy, that’s not true. Your mom leaving was not because you were a problem, it’s because she was.”

“Will you leave?”

“God no,” Steve whispers into Matt’s hair. “I’m here until the end of the line.”

He holds Matt like that until Natasha comes to bring them food. Matt’s fallen asleep, and Natasha’s lips quirk into a smile as she sees them snuggle together, putting their food on the table next to the bed.

“How’s he doing?” she whispers.

Steve shrugs. “I have no idea. He’s probably developing a few issues right now, but hopefully they won’t affect his adult self. I mean, could that happen? Could I be traumatizing him as a kid and it’ll affect him when he’s older again?”

Natasha purses her lips. “There’s a good chance that anything that happens to them now will feel like childhood trauma once we reverse this, but I highly doubt that  _ you’re _ traumatizing Matt, or any of them. You’re doing the best you can, and I’m sure they’ll understand the necessary lies. Time travel is much easier for kids to understand than age-reversing drugs.”

One of the best things about Natasha is that she has a magical way of making you feel like a complete idiot as she makes you feel better. She reaches over and brushes some of Matt’s hair from his face. “Bruce is looking up advice on how to help a newly blind five year old, and I’m about to go out and get anything we’re going to need for him. I don’t want to take the kids with me though, and Bruce seems clueless on how to deal with them, so are you good to watch?”

Steve nods his head. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m good.”

*

Bruce has tucked himself away in the lab to run more tests on all the material gathered from the kids, so Steve is left to watch Disney movies with them while they wait for Natasha to get back. He makes sure both he and Matt both eat breakfast, and between the five of them, there isn’t going to be any leftovers.

Luke, Jess, and Danny seem content to watch the movie, though Jess does keep twisting to see where Matt is. Once she’s reassured yet again that he’s in Steve’s arms however, she appears better.

Bruce pops into the living area of the safe house a few times to grab food, and he and the kids seem to have somehow arrived at the opinion that they'll ignore him if he ignores them.

It looks like it's working.

Disney eventually segueways into  _ Avatar: The Last Airbender _ , which is a good show that hits a little too close to home for Steve. The kids are fascinated by it, and they all take terms describing the action to Matt, which is good because the second episode hasn’t even finished before Steve’s in the kitchen, downing a glass of water and trying to get his heart rate under control.

It’s ridiculous that he’s acting like this, there’s no reason for it, except that Aang’s story hits a little close to home, but that really shouldn’t be a big deal.

Still, he doesn’t want to go back into the living room just yet, and he can trust the kids to be alone in a room for a few minutes.

His mother had to trust him to be alone longer than a few minutes, and oftentimes Steve would be sick or injured when she had to go to work to earn money so they wouldn’t starve.

He misses her, he really does.

Sarah Rogers had the best smile and she gave the best hugs and Steve remembers her clearly. She had always had a kind word to say about people, and Steve remembers growing up the number of people, the “undesirable” people who worked the streets or went to the wrong clubs, that would show up at their door, sometimes sleep on their couch because they had nowhere to go and no one to depend on except for his mother.

His mother had taught him that the actions of a person were more important than their status in society, and Steve just hopes that she would be proud of him.

And she wouldn’t let something like a TV show prevent her from doing what needed to be done, so Steve takes a deep breath and sucks it up and heads back into the living room.

Somehow they took out  _ Avatar _ without him noticing, or having to ask for help in changing over a DVD player, and they’re now watching  _ Young Justice _ attentively.

Steve sits back down, right in between Matt and Luke, Jessica and Danny on the other side of them respectively, and joins in watching with them.

They all stay focused on the show until Natasha comes back with supplies for Matt, clothes for all the kids, and a drawn look on her face.

She sends the kids to get changed into their new pajamas, Luke already grabbing Matt’s hand to help him before either of them can offer to help. Bruce comes up hearing noises, and Steve pauses the show and listens for the kids to be far enough away so they won’t hear him.

“Bruce, how we lookin’ for a cure?”

He gives a deep sigh. “Honestly, Steve, I would love to tell you that I’m close, but I have no idea. This drug is different from anything I’ve seen and it’s going to take me a day at  _ least _ to figure out how it works, let alone make something that can counteract. All in all, I would say we need to plan on them staying this age for at least a week, unless we get lucky and the drug clears out on it’s own.”

“And we need to plan for what we should do if there’s no cure and this doesn’t wear off,” Natasha states, arms crossed as she leans her back against the wall. “Bad as it is to think about, we can’t rule it off and we need to think about what we’re going to tell the kids and the people in their lives.”

Steve is straining his ears to make sure he hears the kids when they come and they won’t hear this.

“They’re going to have questions anyway,” Bruce states. “It’s not like we can keep them here forever, especially if this ends up lasting longer than a week. At some point, they’ll need to leave this safe house, and that’s not counting the fact that they might try and escape.”

Steve sees that far too clearly.

“It’s simple,” Natasha says, frowning like she has the same image in her head that Steve does. “We answer their questions when they ask, but give no details and answer only the letter of their question.”

Bruce gives a huffing laugh. “Don’t you think that’s lying to them?”

“Steve already lied to them,” (he flinches at the truth) “which was the smart thing to do, because we don’t know how they’re going to react to the truth. But if we do need to tell them eventually, we need to build up to it, not lay it down all at once.”

The kids are still changing their clothes. Bruce frowns and looks away from both Natasha and Steve. “Fine,” he mumbles, “but  _ you _ brought up the people that love them. What are we going to tell them?”

A flash of guilt crosses Natasha’s face, and she looks at Steve. He knows what she wants to say, it’s what’s been rattling around his head. He takes the bullet, says the words that Bruce is going to hate.

“We don’t tell them anything, not until we know this is permanent. Right now, this is going to take too much explaining, especially because we don’t know if they know those kids are vigilantes.” Steve takes a deep breath. “Right now, as awful as it, it’s better if they think they’re missing. Technically, they are.”

Bruce opens his mouth like he wants to say more, probably has a hell of a lot more to say and what this means about their morality and Steve knows he deserves to hear it, but he raises his hand quickly as soon as he hears the door creak open.

The kids are quiet, probably realizing that they’re the subject of this conversation, and if Steve didn’t have super hearing, who knows what they would have ended up hearing.

“Guys?” he yells towards them, and there’s a beat of silence before he hears Danny say, “Yeah?” and then Jessica and Luke both sush him.

He bites back a smile, just like Natasha and Bruce are doing next to him, but the conversation that they were just having rattles around in his head. These kids have people who love and care for them as adults, but Steve can’t ease their minds.

A small, selfish part of him hopes that he won’t hear anything about it.

*

It turns out that Jessica’s foster sister is a Trish Walker, a name that means nothing to Steve, but was vaguely familiar to both Natasha and Bruce.

A quick Google search reveals why.

Her skill on the radio is incredible, reminding Steve of the voices he would listen to when he was sick, but her skills as an actress and a singer. . . . 

Well, she was young.

But it means that she’s able to get news out about Jessica’s disappearance  _ fast _ .

She doesn’t seem to be that worried when Steve listens to her show over the first couple of days, but on the third she mention Jessica, asks if she’s listening to pick up her cell.

It’s a small thing, but Steve can hear the tension and worry in her voice, and he knows that Jessica won’t be calling her, that Jessica is currently listening to Natasha read some books by Tamora Pierce and pretending she’s a knight.

It’s adorable, and it breaks Steve’s heart.

He sees Bruce’s jaw clench, and he knows that Bruce wants to call in, tell Trish exactly what’s happening with her sister, but he holds back because of Steve’s orders.

He really hopes they were the right ones.

Natasha has feelers out on the boys. Rand Industries is keeping Danny’s disappearance quiet, especially with all the trouble it’s apparently had recently, but Ward Meachum has almost an army of private investigators looking for him.

Luke Cage and Matt Murdock have both had missing persons reports filed on them, and Luke’s disappearance is starting to be known, questions about where the hero of Harlem is and what he could be doing.

Steve knows that Luke’s helping Matt figure out how to walk with the cane with Danny and Jessica cheer him on in the background.

They’re all good kids. Steve can easily see why they’re going to grow up to heroes.

And as there’s no sign that they’re going to detox from invisible drugs in their system and become adults again, and Bruce is having trouble making a cure that seems stable. He’s a made a few that seem like they could possibly cure the kids, but the side-effects of everything that could go wrong does not make it worth it to any of them.

And through this all, the kids still think they’re time travelers, and more than that, they’re starting to get curious about the outside world that’s not just children’s entertainment.

Danny’s the first one to ask, which isn’t a surprise. Out of all of them, he’s the one who seems the most questioning, the one who wants to figure out how things work the most.

His question is simple.

“Can we go to the pool?” And Steve doesn’t know how to say “No,” to that.

And Matt, Luke, and Jessica all perk up when they hear that idea, and Natasha and Bruce can’t seem to think of a good excuse that the kids will buy, so it ends with them trudging the kids to the nearest neighborhood pool.

It’s an experience that Steve never wants to repeat again.

The kids all talk about what they want to do next time at the waterpark, and the thought of returning makes Steve want to cry.

From the looks of it, it seems like Bruce wants to as well. In fact, if Steve didn’t know better, he would say that Bruce is  _ actually _ crying.

But despite the frustration and how ridiculously expensive the food was, it does make Steve happy to see the kids laughing and having fun. And a part of him knows that it’s important to give the kids good memories now, especially, well especially because they might have to grow up again. And there’s absolutely no Goddamn reason why Steve can’t give them happy memories as soon as he can just for that reason.

The kids are exhausted by the time they return to the safehouse, though Steve is beginning to think of what he needs to do in terms of his apartment and custody. Do they give the kids back? Does he raise them? What exactly  _ is _ going to happen to them?

The lack of answers terrify him.

He does start looking for three bedroom apartments in Brooklyn. 

He then promptly tosses his phone away out of disgust because apartments are also ridiculously expensive, just like everything in the future.

Worst part of it in Steve’s opinion, and you can hold him to that.

But the week that Bruce gave them is a buffer is drawing towards an end. At this point, there’s really no chance that the kids will snap back to being to adults, Bruce has no cure in hand and he doesn’t look close to one, and people are starting to get actively and truly worried about Danny, Jessica, Luke, and Matt disappearing. It’s seems no one has connected yet, which is good, and Steve doesn’t know how someone could even possibly  _ guess _ what actually happened to them, but he’s starting to get paranoid.

Like Natasha and Bruce, both of whom are waiting for Steve to make the decision, he knows that they need to talk to the people in their lives.

He’s just not sure how to even bring that up.

And then Jessica forces his hand.

*

He wakes up to screams.

He’s out of his bed and his room and towards the kids’ in seconds.

The boys are all surrounding Jessica’s, sharing nervous looks and they look relieved with Steve walks in the room.

Steve wishes he could be as confident in his abilities as they were.

They instantly part for Steve to walk right towards Jessica, and he feels like Moses walking through the Red Sea. He tries to control his grimace.

Jessica is still sleeping, but clearly wrapped up in a nightmare and it makes Steve’s heart hurt. No child should look so lost and scared, and he wonders what in the world must be going through her mind to make her look this way.

The others have their trauma, Steve knows it, and he knows that some adult memories flash through their mind at times, that they seem to innately remember things about the modern world that they really shouldn’t.

Steve hopes that this is a regular nightmare though. He’s read the casefile about Jessica. He knows what she’s been through. If Kilgrave is why she’s having nightmares, then Steve doesn’t know how to help with that.

He wishes Natasha and Bruce were still at the safehouse, but Bruce decided it was time to get Tony involved and Natasha had to go on a mission to pick off some rogue HYDRA cells in Europe.

He’s all these kids have right now, and Jesus Christ, that’s terrifying.

He kneels down by the side of the bed, in front of her face. He turns on the light, so that she’ll see it’s him from the very beginning and he slowly starts to whisper, “Jess? Jessica, wake up.”

All that earns him is another whimper, one that puts another crack in his heart.

The thought of briefly shaking her awake crosses his mind, but he pushes the thought down and ignores it. There’s no way he can do that, especially if she’s having a flashback to Kilgrave.

“Jess,” he just says again, a little louder. Again, she doesn’t seem to hear him.

Steve just repeats it again.

And again.

And again.

Until  _ finally _ , Jess wakes up with a muffled scream and wild eyes, swinging out at some unknown person in front of her and Steve only  _ barely _ manages to avoid her wild punches.

Those _ hurt _ , and the powers were hard to explain, especially when Matt kind of correctly assumed they were connected to his blindness. Steve told them it was connected to the time travel, and Luke felt so bad about it that he tried to give Matt some of his powers.

(It was adorable, and it killed an hour when he and Nat were really bored.)

“Jess,” he says, trying to put as much soothing into his voice as he could. “Jess, you’re okay. I got you.”

She’s looking right at him, but Steve knows she doesn’t see him. She whimpers, pulls in on herself and curls up into a tiny ball.

“Jess,” Steve says again. “It’s okay.”

A flicker of awareness comes across her eyes and Steve latches on to it.

“Jess, do you know who I am? Do you know where you are?”

Jessica breathes heavily, her breath thick with sobs, and eventually she gets out a “Steve?”

Steve closes his eyes and says a quick prayer.

“Yeah, Jessie, it’s me.”

She closes her eyes, short, quick breathes that are the beginning of a panic attack escaping her lips. Steve slowly stretches his arms towards her, lays his hand down right in front of her. Without opening her eyes, she grasps onto him tightly and squeezes.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Steve asks. His throat is dry, and he doesn’t want to hear the horrors that Jessica will probably say, but she’s a child who needs him and he’s going to be there for her.

She shakes his head and Steve shoves aside the relief.

“Okay,” he says, “but you know you always can, right? No matter what, if you want to talk to me about this or anything, I’m ready to listen.”

She nods, and grips his hand tighter. Her breathing is getting back under control, and he can see some of the tension slowly starting to leave her body. She’s starting to fall back asleep, but before she’s totally wiped out, she says, in a very soft voice, “I want Trish.”

Steve blinks.

Sometimes the kids have deja vu, and he knows they have nightmares about the things that have happened to them as adults, but this is the first time that any of them have ever said anything about their adult lives that wasn’t said in a tone of dreamy confusion or questions caused by a nightmare.

Steve really doesn’t want the kids to meet anything from their adult lives yet, but he’s not going to turn down this specific request.

As he watches Jessica sleep, he knows he can’t.

*

He waits for Bruce to arrive at the safe house to tell him the plan. Tony’s busy with a lot of projects, but he’s been kind enough to help with figuring out how to help these kids.

He puts Nat on speed dial and tells them what’s going to do.

Thankfully, neither of them argue, though they do express their concerns.

“Steve, Trish could come after us hard when she finds out that we kept her sister from her,” Bruce states, and Natasha agrees with him with a, “You need to be careful with this, Steve.”

“I know,” he sighs.

“I mean, has she said anything else about Trish?” Bruce asks, and Steve shakes his head.

“No, and I haven’t asked.”

“Why not?” Natasha adds, and Steve sighs.

“Because I don’t think it really matters. She remembered Trish once, and she’ll remember her again. And soon they’re all going to start remembering. We might as well get ahead of this now, and hope that the memories indicate that it means these drugs are wearing off.”

“And if they don’t? If these are random flashes and they’re stuck like this?”

Steve drags his hands across his face.

“Well, it’s not like we can keep this a secret forever. I’m going to introduce Jess to Trish. Everything else we can figure out after the fact.”

*

It takes maybe five minutes for Steve to find where Trish Walker lives. It takes him less than an half-hour to get there.

It takes him fifteen heart-pounding moments before he forces himself to get inside the apartment building and get himself to her apartment.

The entire time up, he alternates between desperately hoping that she’s going to be there and desperately hoping that she won’t be home.

Either way, he isn’t totally sure what he’s going to do once he gets there.

He didn’t think that far ahead.

He trudges down the hallway, feeling it seem to lengthen as he moves.

He finally arrives at Trish’s apartment, takes a deep breath, and knocks.

He hears shuffling behind the door, and then it flies open and he sees a wide-eyed Trish Walker staring up at him.

“Captain America,” she whispers.

“Yeah, hi,” he says, hoping the smile he’s plastered onto his face doesn’t look as fake and awkward as he feels it is.

“What, uh, what are you doing here?” she asks.

“I’m here to talk to you about your sister,” he says, and he sees her face change completely.

She draws herself up, squares her shoulders, and the starstruck look in her eyes disappears completely. “What do you know about Jess?”

He takes a deep breath. “I know where she is. And I know what happened to her.”

*

Steve finishes up his story, shifting nervously in the chair while Trish glares daggers at him. “I’m sorry that I kept this hidden from you, but we weren’t sure about what you knew about Jessica. But since she specifically asked about you, we thought that it was important to contact you. For all we know, this could facilitate them returning to their original age.”

“Jeez,” Trish says, laughing bitterly. “I’m just having a hard time believing that Captain America would lie to me and let me think that my sister is  _ dead _ .”

Yeah, Steve definitely feels like a piece of shit, and he opens his mouth to say another apology, but Trish holds up her hand and Steve falls silent.

He knows that he doesn’t have any room to speak right now.

“Where is she?” Trish asks, her shoulders slumping in the chair as all the anger suddenly goes out of her. “Is she hurt?”

Steve sighs. He really doesn’t want to tell her, but he can’t avoid the subject. “She’s been having nightmares. The worst of the four.”

He sees the moment that the implications of his words hate Trish, how she turns a little green and clearly looks like she wants to vomit.

“Kilgrave?” comes out with a pained gasp, and Steve nods.

“Oh, God.” She brings her hand to her mouth, swallows down some of her vomit. “How old is she?”

“Eight,” Steve chokes out. “She’s eight years old and she asked for you. I’m not going to let her down.”

“Like hell you are,” Trish says, jumping up from her chair and snatching her purse as she runs out of the room. “And I’m not either.”

Steve follows her, keeping pace. She’s still pissed, but allows him to lead her to the car. They spend the ride back to the safehouse in total silence, but when Steve parks and moves to get out, Trish blurts out, “Wait!”

He stops, turns and looks at her. “Yeah?”

She bites her lip, looks more uncomfortable than she did before. “What if she doesn’t recognize me at all?”

Steve doesn’t want to say, and Trish continues on. “And what if she never changes back? You said you weren’t sure. What if she has to grow up again? What do I do? I don’t know how to take care of a kid.”

Trish laughs, and it sounds suspiciously like a sob.

“I’ll have to figure out and I’ll love her and I’ll give her a better childhood than the one she had, but that also doesn’t change the fact that  _ my _ Jess will be dead.”

“She’s still in there,” Steve scratches out. “Your Jess.”

“Is she though?” Trish asks. “She might be vaguely aware of things that happened to her as an adult, but as far as she really  _ knows _ , she’s a time traveller being taken care of by Captain America while I’m just going to be a stranger.”

“I won’t fight you,” he says. “If you want to have custody over her. I can tell her the truth, and we’ll keep looking for a cure. She doesn’t have to be a stranger to you.”

Trish shakes her head. “No.”

“What?” Steve asks, knowing the confusion that must be on his face. “You don’t want custody?”

He assumed that he would have to fight Trish for custody if he had wanted to push, not that she would let him keep her sister.

“Not right now,” she amends. “Maybe in the future. But taking her now? It’ll still feel like giving up.”

Steve doesn’t understand, but Trish looks resolute, and he doesn’t want to fight her.

“So what do you want to tell her?” he asks. She shrugs. 

“She’s a time traveller, right? We’ll just keep telling her that lie.”

Steve hears the admonishment in her voice.

When Steve ushers her into the house, Bruce is talking rapidly on the phone while the kids watch the Disney Channel. Luke is describing the action of the screen to Matt while Danny is giving colorful commentary, and Jessica is lying straight on the floor and using a coloring book.

She seems determined to make Cinderella a warrior princess, and Steve smiles. From the corner of his eye, he sees that Trish can’t fight hers off her face.

“Hey, guys,” he says, and they all look up.

“Who’s that?” Danny asks, pointing at Trish.

“A friend,” Steve says, eyes on Jessica, waiting for a flicker of recognition. She tilts her head and squints at Trish, but eventually turns back to her coloring book, shoulders hunched.

Steve looks at Trish.

Jessica hid it well, but she knows Trish.

Steve opens his mouth to ask her a question, try to ply an answer out of her, but he’s interrupted by a frazzled, “Steve,” from Bruce.

“What?” he asks, moving Bruce towards the kitchen while Trish stands awkwardly with the kids.

“Tony found the dealers, and Nat and Clint were coming back when he got in contact. Couldn’t get a hold of you. They already got them under control, and Nat’s coming back with a  _ cure _ .”

A cure.

Steve’s knees feel weak, and he doesn’t know what to think.

Relief, because that means he doesn’t have to worry about the kids and what’s going to need to happen since they won’t be actual little kids anymore.

Sadness, because that means he’s going to have to let go of the little kids he’s grown to love. Trish was worried about what it meant if Jessica stayed young.

Steve didn’t realize until this very moment, when he’s gripping the kitchen counter and closing his eyes, how much he was secretly hoping that he could keep them.

But he forces those feelings down and away, and goes to tell Trish that the cure has been found. He knows she’ll be happy, even though now he wishes he had decided to think over telling for another day.

But she won’t have to worry about losing her sister now, as soon as Nat comes over, they can give the kids the crue and they’ll be adults again.

Hopefully adults that won’t be upset that Steve let the world think they were missing for a couple weeks, even though he didn’t know what else to do.

He walks back into the living room, sees Trish sitting down with Jessica and listening attentively and with a soft smile at the story that Jessica is building with the coloring book, Danny give notes and Luke and Matt listening with interest.

He takes the mental picture, vows to draw it as soon as he can.

He doesn’t want to forget these kids, he couldn’t handle that happening, even though they’re about to forget all about him.

*

Trish’s eyes fill with relief when Steve tells her the news, and he feels proud that he’s able to cover up his discomfort over the whole thing. At least with Trish. The mournful look he’s given by Bruce reminds Steve that it wasn’t just him who got close to these kids, he and Natasha had their moments with them too.

Nat gets back within the hour, her eyes downcast, and before either one of them knows it, they’ve wrapped themselves, and Bruce, into a tight hug, mourning the kids they were just starting to really get to know, to let them become the adults they’re meant to be.

Luckily, it’s close to naptime, and they manage to get the kids into bed quickly. They unanimously agreed that it would be better, if the kids were asleep for this, especially if this could bring them pain, though Tony had done his tests.

This was definitely the cure.

Steve watches the kids sleep, and he feels the eyes of Trish, Bruce, and Nat on him. He takes a deep breath, and grabs the syringes that Bruce has prepared. Bruce offered to do this for Steve, but Steve wanted to do this himself. He wanted to say goodbye to these kids, and he doesn’t know how to do that in a way they’ll understand.

This right here? This is all he has.

He slowly injects each kid with the cure, and then leaves the room, the others trailing behind him.

When they wake up, they won’t be kids anymore.

He shouldn’t feel so sad about that.

*

Ultimately, he ends up leaving the safe house before any of the kids, the  _ adults _ , wake up. He walks towards the nearest bar, but changes his mind when he thinks about the fact that he won’t actually be able to get drunk enough to forget everything.

So he heads towards the nearest art gallery, hoping there will be something there that can take him out of his head, give him some peace for a little bit.

It’s a failure, but at least he can say that he tried. 

He sits down a bench in front of a painting of a child playing front of a tree. It’s simplistic and pretty, but he’s not really studying it, he’s just staring.

Time goes by, and it’s only disturbed by someone sitting down next to him.

By  _ Matt _ sitting down next to him.

They sit in silence for a few moments before Matt breaks the silence.

“Thank you for taking care of us, you didn’t have to do that?”

Steve shrugged. “I didn’t know who to call, and what else could I have done?”

“Found someone else to take care of us? I don’t think you’d have had much trouble doing that.”

“No one I trusted that would have been able to do it.”

Matt smiles softly. “Okay, maybe. But I still appreciate what you did for me, for the rest of us. And I know they do too.”

Steve scratches the back of his head. “What do you remember?”

“Not a lot. It’s mainly just flashes. I remember you taking care of us.”

Steve gives a small laugh. “I hope I didn’t screw you up too much.”

“No, I think you actually helped us.”

The sincerity in his voice shocks Steve, and he turns to look at Matt.

“What do you mean?”

Matt shrugs. “Well, I can’t speak for the other’s, but I remember your words to me about my parent’s. It was helpful. I’ve never really spoken about it to anyone before, but having your words in the back of my head, spoken to me when I was so young, it was more helpful than you would think.”

Words are stuck in Steve’s throat, and he doesn’t know how to get him out. He blinks quickly a few times to clear his vision, which was grown surprisingly wet. “Well, uh, well I was glad to be a help.”

Matt nods in acknowledgement.

“How are the others?” Steve asks. “And how did you mind me?”

“Your friend Natasha tracks you through GPS.” Steve nods, that’s not new. She tracks everyone and Steve would find it frustrating except that he knows that it just means that she cares. “And I think the others are good. Embarrassed, especially Jessica. Trish cried when she barged into the living room to yell at. . . . Well, I think just to yell. Luke and Danny were concerned about getting the story from Bruce and then started figuring out a story we can tell everyone in our lives about where we’ve been. They’re still arguing about it, I think we’ve settled on the basic idea of kidnapping though.”

Steve grins at that, even though the image in his head is of them as little kids, not the grown adults they are now. He doesn’t look forward to seeing them again and having the image destroyed, even though he knows it should come sooner rather than later.

“Are you mad that I kept you hidden?” he asks.

“I understand it,” Matt tells him. “I can’t imagine how worried Foggy and Karen must have been over these past few weeks, but I also don’t know how this could ever be explained to them. Not to mention that Karen doesn’t know that I’m Daredevil and who knows how I could revealed myself as a little kid.

“But I’m not gonna lie and say that I’m happy with the fact that my best friends  _ have _ been worried, and I’m not happy with the fact that there’s going to be a lot of paperwork and questions about my sudden reappearance.”

“I don’t know what Danny and Luke are planning, but we can just say that you guys were kidnapped by group obsessed with superheroes aiming for Luke and Jess and captured you and Danny because you guys accidently ended up seeing the whole thing. Me and Nat will sign-off on the whole thing, hardly any paperwork for you guys to deal with at all.”

Matt smiles, wide and bright at that. “They were arguing about  _ dragons _ when I left, so I’m pretty sure you came up with the best idea we’ll have today.”

Steve returns the grin, even though he know Matt can’t see it.

“And I just want to say,” Matt continues, “that I don’t know why we all can’t meet up again. Despite their embarrassment, I know that the others are grateful for you watching over us all these weeks, and,” Matt shuffles his foot, “I think we’ll miss you and Nat and Bruce. In our own ways.”

The happiness that bubbles up in Steve is totally unexpected in its appearance and how encompassing it is.

“I would like that,” Steve says, knowing that he has the stupidest grin on his face. “A lot.”

“We can go back to the waterpark,” Matt jokes, and Steve suppresses a groan.

“No, never again. You guys can just come over and watch Disney movies all day and play with coloring books and legos. Much better use of time.”

“If you say so.”

A clattering noise comes from the gallery’s entrance and when Steve looks over, he sees Danny carefully trying to right a sculpture from where it had almost fallen, cringing as he did so with an exasperated Luke and Jessica behind him.

He had seen them as adults, both in person and in pictures, but it’s strange to actually see it now. Steve stands up quickly, Matt only a hairsbreadth behind him.

He watches as they get around the angry sculptor and head right towards them. Steve tenses knowing that they might be mad about what happened and they might want to show that frustration violently and he’s certainly not going to stop them when-

Danny wraps his arms around Steve and squeezes tightly. “Thanks so much for the TLC, man. It’s super appreciated. Can’t imagine what we would have done without.”

This is different than what Steve was expecting.

Danny pulls away only for Luke to hug him, and then Jessica finishes with a “light” punch to the arm.

“You should have waited around. Wanted to thank you the moment we woke up, but I had to deal with Trish before I could come here.”

“Yeah, well, I’m glad you’re okay,” Steve says.

Her mouth twists with embarrassment, but her eyes are alight with a smile when she says, “We are.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed!


End file.
